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It can give you the breathing room to actually _do_ something that can change your status and allow you to have a decent shot at "own the means of production",

It can give you the breathing room to actually _do_ something that can change your status and allow you to have a decent shot at "own the means of production", though. I've probably had hundreds of conversations with people who will say "well, not everyone can afford to move town" or "not everyone can afford to take a week off work" or whatever else. That's an enormous handicap - you're basically a slave to your current job, and if it tires you out enough that you can't train/learn/do other productive work outside of it, then you're stuck. Personally I grew up with essentially zero, and pretty much self-enforced level 1 upon myself until this chart would have me at level 4. People talk a lot about how certain startup founders aren't really risking anything because they start out with a safety net. You can create that safety net for yourself, with a little luck along the way, provided that you're sensible.

lowercased 7y ago
"not everyone can afford to take a week off work" even if you can, financially, it's often hard to do so mentally/emotionally. if you're taking time away from work, that means no income - whether you desperately need it or not may be immaterial to the mental state you've built for yourself.
- esotericn 7y ago
  I think that's the point of the article. If you have 4 weeks' worth of spending saved then it's difficult. If you have 40, then it's fairly easy. If you have 400, it's trivial.
  - lowercased 7y ago
    well.. I was getting at, it still can be mentally difficult to pry yourself away from it, even if you financially can 'afford' it.
    - icedchai 7y ago
      Tell me about it. I have over 25 years worth of living expenses and still haven't gotten the nerve to just get out.
      - lowercased 7y ago
        that's sort of what I'm getting at. what's holding you back? I'd like to think if I had 25 years... yeah, I'd just stop and do .. well, I'd probably do what I do now, but less of it, and be more picky, and travel more. as it stands, I've got perhaps... ~5 years of living expenses saved up. Certainly enough to not worry about a few days of non-income, but it's.. certainly not FU money. 25 years of expenses lined up seems like it might give you more breathing room, but, I suspect your comfort level and goal posts move. when I was in big debt, I thought "man, just having $1k in the bank will make all the difference, and I'll be fine". and when I got there, I was 'fine' for about 10 minutes. Then the goal was $2k. Then 5. Then 10. Then 30. And so on. For me, there's a realization that it's moderately hard to earn and keep that money, and that it can be reduced rather quickly, so.... keeping earning income is still top of mind, at least for another few years.
        esotericn 7y ago
        5 years is certainly FU money to me. You really think you couldn't walk out of a job and find another one in a few months? Will you even notice that drop in savings aside from as a theoretical number on a spreadsheet? It sounds to me like you have a complex about this rather than it being in any sense rational. (I don't mean that as an insult at all.) 5 years is less than the amount of time it took for me to go from a skint teenager in a dead end town, to a graduate with a full time job.
        lowercased 7y ago
        in my case, much of it is tied to equities (retirement account is a portion, taxable account is other). straight cash - probably ~12-14 months. Having lived through a couple of crashes, the idea that 30% of that could be gone (for a long time) still looms. And yes, it's sort of a complex. I have to remind myself that yes, I can pay the extra 50c and get cheese on the burger if I feel like it. I'd lived 30+ years without being able to do that (meaning that adding cheese a few times would be noticeable at the end of a week), it's a hard mental state to break from. Not 'working' means ... a day where savings isn't going up, etc. Replenishing the spent money is simultaneously both easier (larger savings tends to grow in larger chunks) and harder (takes longer to earn new money vs the compounding of earlier money, and takes more of the remaining time I have left, which is always depleting). I'm not claiming it's entirely rational, by any means, and that's why I was saying earlier that it's hard to break out of. EDIT: I've always taken FU money to mean... you never have to engage in any sort of 'work' ever again, not just for a short time. In some ways, I've been able to use this cushion to say "no" to some situations/jobs/projects that I would have agreed to before, but it's not the same as saying FU to people. :)
- baud147258 7y ago
  > "not everyone can afford to take a week off work" Being in a country where vacation time is paid by the company (currently 7 weeks / year, even if I usually don't use up all of it), the idea that taking a day off work means less money at the end of the month is mind boggling.
  - esotericn 7y ago
    I'm talking about taking a week _off_ off. For example leaving one job and having a gap before another one, or getting sacked and having a few weeks without work, or moving town before you have something lined up, etc. Basically, being able to function without income for a nonzero period. I wouldn't want to use my holiday weeks looking for work more than a few times in my life even if I have quite a generous allowance (well, generous by 'normal people' standards, I find the idea of working >80% of the year quite odd)
    - sylk 7y ago
      Welcome to life though, the best way to do this is to have a partner that can help you when times are rough.
  - bko 7y ago
    Being in a country where I can negotiate with my employer as to vacation time in respect to my salary, the idea that someone has to have accept minimum of 7 weeks regardless of circumstances is mind boggling.
    - shantly 7y ago
      It's because, absent that protection, workers on the weaker end tend to get squeezed down to very low PTO whether they want that or not. [EDIT] weaker end in terms of ability to negotiate—so, the vast majority of workers.
      - bko 7y ago
        Unfortunately what often happens is that this law applies only to full time workers at some cutoff (e.g. 30+ hours a week). If the cost of full time is too high (e.g. 7 weeks paid vacation for a low skilled job), the employer would be more likely to hire more part time workers. And you would see people working multiple part time jobs rather that a full time job. Some of those workers would likely be willing to forgo a generous benefit like 7 week vacation for the opportunity to work one job.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Even if you don't need it, you really probably do. A lot of people talking about entrepreneurship and whatnot have some kind of blindness to the idea that one can fail at these things, and once you've eaten up your savings you're back at square 0 and back to the soul-crushing reality of job. Objectively it is wiser to simply keep the job in the first place.
  - esotericn 7y ago
    Or they're just talking about different ratios of saving/spending. As I posted below - the situation in which you have 40 weeks of spending set aside is radically different to that of having 4. From my perspective, and I recognise things are probably very different in the USA with your health insurance catastrophe, taking a few months off work to unwind, or check out the job market, or whatever else every now and then is a completely normal thing to do. My first software job came about because I left a job and bounced around for a bit. I had enough mental space and time to physically visit interviews without the sort of typical "pretend to your boss you're ill" stuff. Without that time I'd be somewhere completely different now.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    50% of small businesses fail. 20% fail in their first year. The real cost of failure isn't just loss of savings. It's potential homelessness, bankruptcy or death through less of health cover, or bankrupcty through student loan payments. In a functional culture the cost of entry for small businesses is much lower, as is the Total Cost of Failure. For a country that claims to be business friendly, the US makes it unbelievably dangerous to start a small business without the backing of a significant financial safety net.
    - blaser-waffle 7y ago
      This is something I think about a lot as an American in Canada. I can afford to stick my neck out in a lot of ways because, worst case, I still have healthcare even if I'm out of a job for 4+ weeks.

lowercased 7y ago

"not everyone can afford to take a week off work" even if you can, financially, it's often hard to do so mentally/emotionally. if you're taking time away from work, that means no income - whether you desperately need it or not may be immaterial to the mental state you've built for yourself.

esotericn 7y ago
I think that's the point of the article. If you have 4 weeks' worth of spending saved then it's difficult. If you have 40, then it's fairly easy. If you have 400, it's trivial.
- lowercased 7y ago
  well.. I was getting at, it still can be mentally difficult to pry yourself away from it, even if you financially can 'afford' it.
  - icedchai 7y ago
    Tell me about it. I have over 25 years worth of living expenses and still haven't gotten the nerve to just get out.
    - lowercased 7y ago
      that's sort of what I'm getting at. what's holding you back? I'd like to think if I had 25 years... yeah, I'd just stop and do .. well, I'd probably do what I do now, but less of it, and be more picky, and travel more. as it stands, I've got perhaps... ~5 years of living expenses saved up. Certainly enough to not worry about a few days of non-income, but it's.. certainly not FU money. 25 years of expenses lined up seems like it might give you more breathing room, but, I suspect your comfort level and goal posts move. when I was in big debt, I thought "man, just having $1k in the bank will make all the difference, and I'll be fine". and when I got there, I was 'fine' for about 10 minutes. Then the goal was $2k. Then 5. Then 10. Then 30. And so on. For me, there's a realization that it's moderately hard to earn and keep that money, and that it can be reduced rather quickly, so.... keeping earning income is still top of mind, at least for another few years.
      - esotericn 7y ago
        5 years is certainly FU money to me. You really think you couldn't walk out of a job and find another one in a few months? Will you even notice that drop in savings aside from as a theoretical number on a spreadsheet? It sounds to me like you have a complex about this rather than it being in any sense rational. (I don't mean that as an insult at all.) 5 years is less than the amount of time it took for me to go from a skint teenager in a dead end town, to a graduate with a full time job.
        lowercased 7y ago
        in my case, much of it is tied to equities (retirement account is a portion, taxable account is other). straight cash - probably ~12-14 months. Having lived through a couple of crashes, the idea that 30% of that could be gone (for a long time) still looms. And yes, it's sort of a complex. I have to remind myself that yes, I can pay the extra 50c and get cheese on the burger if I feel like it. I'd lived 30+ years without being able to do that (meaning that adding cheese a few times would be noticeable at the end of a week), it's a hard mental state to break from. Not 'working' means ... a day where savings isn't going up, etc. Replenishing the spent money is simultaneously both easier (larger savings tends to grow in larger chunks) and harder (takes longer to earn new money vs the compounding of earlier money, and takes more of the remaining time I have left, which is always depleting). I'm not claiming it's entirely rational, by any means, and that's why I was saying earlier that it's hard to break out of. EDIT: I've always taken FU money to mean... you never have to engage in any sort of 'work' ever again, not just for a short time. In some ways, I've been able to use this cushion to say "no" to some situations/jobs/projects that I would have agreed to before, but it's not the same as saying FU to people. :)
baud147258 7y ago
> "not everyone can afford to take a week off work" Being in a country where vacation time is paid by the company (currently 7 weeks / year, even if I usually don't use up all of it), the idea that taking a day off work means less money at the end of the month is mind boggling.
- esotericn 7y ago
  I'm talking about taking a week _off_ off. For example leaving one job and having a gap before another one, or getting sacked and having a few weeks without work, or moving town before you have something lined up, etc. Basically, being able to function without income for a nonzero period. I wouldn't want to use my holiday weeks looking for work more than a few times in my life even if I have quite a generous allowance (well, generous by 'normal people' standards, I find the idea of working >80% of the year quite odd)
  - sylk 7y ago
    Welcome to life though, the best way to do this is to have a partner that can help you when times are rough.
- bko 7y ago
  Being in a country where I can negotiate with my employer as to vacation time in respect to my salary, the idea that someone has to have accept minimum of 7 weeks regardless of circumstances is mind boggling.
  - shantly 7y ago
    It's because, absent that protection, workers on the weaker end tend to get squeezed down to very low PTO whether they want that or not. [EDIT] weaker end in terms of ability to negotiate—so, the vast majority of workers.
    - bko 7y ago
      Unfortunately what often happens is that this law applies only to full time workers at some cutoff (e.g. 30+ hours a week). If the cost of full time is too high (e.g. 7 weeks paid vacation for a low skilled job), the employer would be more likely to hire more part time workers. And you would see people working multiple part time jobs rather that a full time job. Some of those workers would likely be willing to forgo a generous benefit like 7 week vacation for the opportunity to work one job.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Even if you don't need it, you really probably do. A lot of people talking about entrepreneurship and whatnot have some kind of blindness to the idea that one can fail at these things, and once you've eaten up your savings you're back at square 0 and back to the soul-crushing reality of job. Objectively it is wiser to simply keep the job in the first place.
- esotericn 7y ago
  Or they're just talking about different ratios of saving/spending. As I posted below - the situation in which you have 40 weeks of spending set aside is radically different to that of having 4. From my perspective, and I recognise things are probably very different in the USA with your health insurance catastrophe, taking a few months off work to unwind, or check out the job market, or whatever else every now and then is a completely normal thing to do. My first software job came about because I left a job and bounced around for a bit. I had enough mental space and time to physically visit interviews without the sort of typical "pretend to your boss you're ill" stuff. Without that time I'd be somewhere completely different now.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  50% of small businesses fail. 20% fail in their first year. The real cost of failure isn't just loss of savings. It's potential homelessness, bankruptcy or death through less of health cover, or bankrupcty through student loan payments. In a functional culture the cost of entry for small businesses is much lower, as is the Total Cost of Failure. For a country that claims to be business friendly, the US makes it unbelievably dangerous to start a small business without the backing of a significant financial safety net.
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    This is something I think about a lot as an American in Canada. I can afford to stick my neck out in a lot of ways because, worst case, I still have healthcare even if I'm out of a job for 4+ weeks.